Return to the Scene of the Crime, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45, Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, & Snow Crash

Return to the Scene of the Crime is the DVD version of the filmed version of the This American Life radio show done last year. As I didn't see either time it was shown in theaters, but I did listen to it when broadcast in abbreviated form, I appreciated the chance to see it. And see Joss Whedon performing in public. As a big fan of This American Life, I enjoyed it. Even if knowing how most of it ended already slightly detracted from my watching it, watching the commentary and hearing Ira and the rest of them nitpicking was pretty interesting. Plus, supporting the show is always good.

Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45 is a Barbara Tuchman book. And it won a Pulitzer prize. As such, it's a great book. Well worth reading if you have any interest at all in Chinese history. And if you wanted to know why the hell the Nationalists were so corrupt, this is a pretty good way to find it out. Clearly, Chiang Kai-shek deserved to lose China, but the most frustrating aspect of it (and, of course, we had the exact same problem in Vietnam) is that our desire to prop up anti-Communist but horrible despots led to much suffering. For some reason, we haven't learned our lesson. The enemy of my enemy may be our friend, but if we just give blind allegiance and support to everyone, we tend to screw up things. Should we look at our support for Iraq and Afghanistan and dictatorships throughout Latin America, we see this trend continues to cause problems.

Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records is great if you have any interest in learning about indie rock in the 1990s. Just like Our Band Could Be Your Life is the definitive look at indie rock in the 1980s, it's hard to imagine anyone covering just what it's like to be in an indie rock band and run an indie rock label over the last 20 years and doing it as well as this book did. Having all of the interviews with the people themselves makes it great. Ryan Adams is still a dick though. I learned a lot, even with my longtime Merge Records fandom (and enormous Merge Records music collection, owning somewhere around half the entire Merge discography), so definitely pick it up if you want to learn. Check out the website, full of fun Web 2.0ness.

Snow Crash, speaking of the web, is a great book, cyberpunky, and mixing my love of computers with mythology. If there were another author more designed for more of my interests, please point them out. A love of Japanese culture, post-apocalyptic America, the mafia, crazy Christians, and, of course, dentata just added to my enjoyment. I absolutely loved the book. Definitely one of my favorite books I've read. I'm not sure if I like it more than Cryptonomicon, but I think I like the approach of religious history more interesting than the history of cryptology. Either way, I need to read more of his work.

American Swing, 1984, & Slap Shot

American Swing is 81 minutes of messed up. Far be it from me to start going all moral all over people, but having sex with lots of people without protection, on dingy mattresses, in swimming pools, and the like is just disgusting. And the guy at the center of this, Larry Levenson, is a creep and tax evader. With possible mob ties. I was surprised by just how much they showed in the movie, that unrated movie is NC-17, so be forewarned. You will see wangs and hoohas, from not particularly attractive people. The movie didn't take a side as to whether Plato's Retreat was evil or not, and Jon Hart and Matthew Kaufman got some great interviews. Sure, it's a deeply messed up story, but I look forward to seeing what they come up with next. Also, Ed Koch is very, very gay.

1984 is a movie I've been meaning to watch for years. Ever since I first found out that Susan Hamilton was naked in it. This was after I had read the book, and had little interest in actually watching it for class, and so the nudity was not nearly as high on my list of reasons to see it now as it was back in high school. I do want to say two more things about the nudity before getting to the film. One: there's a scene where Winston and Julia are standing at the window, and someone comes in the door, but Winston only turns the top of his body, so you don't see penis. This is both wrong and uncomfortable-looking. Two: Suzanna Hamilton has more hair in her armpits than John Hurt has on his entire body. Anyway, the film is pretty good, conveying the book's message well. That's pretty much all.

Slap Shot is a gloriously profane look at minor league hockey in the 70s. Really, it's a typically 70s sports movie, that many films have tried and failed to be (I'm looking at you Major League). The team is made up mostly of actual minor league hockey players, most of whom are based on the actors themselves, which lends an air of realism that make it work. Of course the stripping during the game wasn't real, but most of it actually happened. I can definitely see why this film has such a huge cult following. I've watched more hockey in the last week of the Olympics than I have in many, many years.

Arabesque, Emma, Coraline, & The Invention of Lying

Arabesque is Stanley Donen trying to redo Charade, but with Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren replacing Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Of course, it is nowhere near as great. Also bad: the brownface. They couldn't find one single Arab to play an Arab in the film? Beyond that, Gregory Peck running was hilarious, but I don't think it was supposed to be as funny as it was. And the plot was basically nonsensical. Not a bad film by any means, but not particularly recommended either.

Emma is... well, it's the third version I've seen, and although others had lots to recommend them, this may be the best version. Romola Garai gets the right mix of innocence and attempting to do the right thing even when she is actually doing the wrong thing. This has Edmund Bertram vs Edmund Bertram for Emma's love. Which is kinda funny, because all of these Jane Austen adaptations share outfits (thanks BBC cost-cutting measures), it's only right that they'd also share heroes. And Edmund (the Jonny Lee Miller version, not the Blake "Emo-lton" Ritson one) wins. Michael Gambon needs to keep playing old guys who aren't completely all there. I think this is the new version of Emma to watch. Congrats BBC for showing everyone else how to do it.

Coraline is really good. It's a shame that so many good animated films came out this year. But it's also nice that so many good animated films came out this year. Henry Selick is quite talented, and I hope that the success of Coraline allows him to make many more films. I also wish that Other Father Song had been nominated for an Oscar rather than two from the Princess & the Frog. Randy Newman is vastly over-nominated as a songwriter.

The Invention of Lying is a kinda worthless film. Robb Lowe plays smarmy pretty well, and there are some interesting ideas about how ridiculous religion is, but still, its a waste of talent. Could possibly have been funny, but it never quite gelled. I watched it on a plane though, so there were some interesting edits. Basically, my high school friend wrote a review for it in the Village Voice that really covers my feelings on the film.

Transsiberian, Wanted, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Southland Tales, & District 9

Transsiberian is by Brad Anderson, director of Happy Accidents and Next Stop Wonderland, two interesting if flawed romantic comedies. This one is decidedly not a romantic comedy, but a story of two missionaries who get more than they bargained for when they meet two youngsters on the Transsiberian Railroad. Ben Kingsley does a fine job in the role of a cop who meets up with the couple. And Emily Mortimer and Woody Harrelson are also quite good, and Thomas Kretschmann just needs to be the first choice for creepy Eastern Europeans. He plays them so well. I wasn't particularly thrilled with the torture scene. Too realistic for me.

Wanted is a film that makes me pissed. Short of its utter ridiculousness, I can accept it existing, but only for Morgan Freeman cursing. James McAvoy should keep his normal accent, not be an American. Thomas Kretschmann is utterly wasted, not being an Eastern European badass. Screw you film.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army is also kinda frustrating, but less so. Hellboy was a fun film, far better than it should have been, as Guillermo del Toro is capable of raising up bad material to a good film. Unfortunately for this film, I just didn't care all that much about it. I know the first one made money, but I don't think this sequel was really needed. I hope that the ending suggests that they're not going to make a third. Otherwise

Southland Tales is a terrible film that makes me retroactively judge Donnie Darko much more harshly. Either Richard Kelly is completely messing with everyone or he is completely full of himself and thinks he's infallible. But he's very fallible. The Rock actually isn't too bad in it, but everyone else is either completely wasted or just horribly miscast. Basically, there's nothing at all to recommend it to anyone. Lots of good actors in it, but no one doing anything remotely worthwhile. So, Richard Kelly, you have horribly failed. The satire falls flat, and I think I am bothered much more by movies that set up an alternate "present" that are completely unrealistic.

District 9, on the other hand, is also set in the "present", but sets up an alternate timeline that makes sense. If aliens had arrived in Johannesburg, it is realistic that we might have a Blackwater-esque group that basically controls the aliens. And the film is quite a bit of fun, full of exploding bodies that Peter Jackson clearly loved. I can see him watching this film and saying, "This is the kind of movie I wish I had made." Since he gave Blomkamp $30 million to make the film, it's great that they're of similar interests. I liked the subtext about apartheid and human bodies rebelling and learning through being exposed to new technologies, along with the mostly anti-military and anti-mercenary aspects of it. My biggest problem, and something that really bothered me once I noticed it happening more and more, was that the film was set up to be a semi-documentary with footage from a camera crew filming but eventually drops that almost entirely, slowly but surely, really bothered me. First person camerawork generally doesn't work, because my first reaction to crazy stuff would not be to keep filming. This is a serious problem in other films, but here it just bothered me because of the original setup of the camera crew.

Sisters of the Gion, Up the Yangtze, Paris, je t'aime, & Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

Sisters of the Gion is another Mizoguchi movie from the Fallen Women Eclipse series. The opening shot, of an auction of all of a husband's business, is impressive in setting up a broken man, but the rest of the film focuses more on the relationship between two sister geishas, the older "wise" one and the younger "vain" one. When the older one tries to help the husband, the younger one tries to get men to embezzle for a new kimono and expel him from the house. It's a big critique of geishadom, and it's very well-deserved. Geishas are creepy. I support things that point out just how creepy geishas and other paying for companionship things are.

Up the Yangtze is a documentary about a family that's being displaced by the Three Gorges Dam, and so they basically sell their daughter into a job on a cruise ship catering to Americans. Of course, it's horribly depressing, with the traditional China being destroyed by modernization. The movie feels more like a fiction film, even though it's clearly a documentary. Very well done, but I kinda wish they had subtitles on the DVD, because, especially when they're trying to learn English, they're very hard to understand. And I felt really bad for these people who have to deal with these terrible patronizing tourists. The lessons not to discuss politics are hilarious, especially the warnings to avoid Quebec's independence movement or Northern Ireland are great. I wonder if tour guides for Chinese groups here are advised not to mention Tibet. Watching the clearly false representation of China that tourists are being fed is frustrating. But the scenery shots were really great. And of the people in it was still on the boat when my parents went on it, which they watched after they came back.

Paris, je t'aime is a collection of short films about Paris, each set in a different arrondissement. As with all short film collections, some are better than others. Things to take away from it: mimes are terrible, Oscar Wilde's ghost gives good advice to bad people, the Coen Brothers are great with their short films (their short in To Each His Own Cinema, which I have seen online, is hilarious), and the one about hair cuts was terrible. If you want to see it, just know that you will be bored by many of them, in search of a few that are fairly good.

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson is an interesting documentary about... well, it's in the title. Alex Gibney, director of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Taxi to the Dark Side, does a great job trying to cover the crazy life of Hunter S., which, even with my knowledge of him, mainly from movies and some of his writings, was a lot of new stuff. Definitely a good watch if you're at all interested in him.